Archive of Past CFC Events
2006-2007 | 2005-2006 | 2004-2005 | 2003-2004| 2002-2003 | 2001-2002 | 2000-2001 | 1999-2000

2006-2007:

• Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 7pm in the Vandenburg Room at the Michigan League: Translating Greek Tragedy for Modern Audiences: A Reading by Ellen McLaughlin and Anne Carson. Ellen McLaughlin is an actor and playwright based in New York. She is well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and has worked on and off Broadway.  Her plays have received numerous national and international productions, including Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, and Oedipus.  She will read from her new book, The Greek Plays. Anne Carson is Professor of Classics, Comparative Literature, and English at the University of Michigan.  Her books include Eros the Bittersweet, Autobiography of Red, The Beauty of the Husband, Translations of Sappho, and Decreation.  She will read from her new book Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides.

• Saturday, November 4 and Sunday, November 5, 2006 at Concordia University: Recovering Philology: Philology and its Histories. Recovering Philology, edited by Professor Sean Gurd, unites a group of leading scholars to address a topic that has become increasingly pressing in the past decade: philology and its relationship to history. Conceived for readers in classical studies, the history of scholarship, literary criticism and theory, and cultural studies, the book aims to make a significant mark in contemporary debates about literature and culture. Professor Gurd is Assistant Professor of Greek Studies in the Department of Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. To read Prof. Gurd's proposal for "Recovering Philology," click here. For the full program of conference events, click here.

• Monday, November 6, 2006 at 4:30pm in Angell Hall G127: Spectacle and Depravity: Gladiators, Idols, and the Technology of Reality - A Public Lecture by Professor Dean Hammer. What do Roman gladiator spectacles, reality television, and contemporary politics have in common?  In his talk, "Spectacle and Depravity: Gladiators, Idols, and the Technology of Reality," Dean Hammer will explore the implications of what he describes as the "technology of reality."  The "technology of reality," which can be traced as far back as Roman times, seems to provide a nearly invisible means by which the lives of distant peoples and places can be transmitted to us.  But the technology is not transparent; it makes us into consumers of reality by placing reality at our disposal.  In this talk, Prof. Hammer will offer a reinterpretation of Roman spectacle and points to the dilemma that the technology of reality poses for contemporary politics. Dean Hammer is the John W. Wetzel Professor of Classics and Professor of Government at Franklin and Marshall College.  He was formerly a junior fellow at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. He is author of The Puritan Tradition and The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought and is completing a book on Roman political thought entitled Roman Political Thought and the Return to the World.  His articles have appeared in Political Theory, American Journal of Philology, Historia, Arethusa, Phoenix, The Classical Journal, Classical World, Theory, Culture and Society, and Philosophy Today, and are forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Political Theory and The Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought.

2005-2006:

• Sunday, September 25, 2005 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. in Angell Hall 3222: University of Michigan-University of Bristol symposium on Classical Reception and the Political. Please visit the conference website for more details.

• October 31, 2005 to December 2, 2005 at the Alfred Berkowitz Gallery at the UM-Dearborn's Mardigian Library: Detroit and Rome: Building on the Past, an exhibition of archival and contemporary photographs of Detroit and Rome researched and designed by UM-Dearborn students in the museum practice seminars taught by Professor Melanie Grunow Sobocinski (Art History). The exhibition explores the classical heritage of Detroit and similarities between urban processes in Rome and Detroit. Click here for more information.

• January 12, 2006 from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 3222: Classical Modernities: A Symposium. Organized by CFC, this interdisciplinary symposium brings together three scholars doing some of the most innovative research on the role of classical philosophy and literature in constituting our modernity. The guiding question for the symposium will be: what are the theoretical and political stakes of a variety of "classical postures" deployed in early modern writings? The symposium will focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a decisive moment in the early modern period when classical genres, themes, and ideas are refracted into their modern forms. For more information, please visit the symposium website. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English Language and Literature, the Program in Comparative Literature, the Department of Classical Studies, the Eighteenth-Century Studies Group, the Institute for the Humanities, the Center for European Studies, and the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

• Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 4:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A brownbag discussion entitled Classics at Michigan. Join past and present Classical Studies graduate students as they present the results of their research into the history of classics as a discipline at the University of Michigan.  For more information, please contact us at cfc@umich.edu. Speakers and their topics will include:

  Kate Bosher (Classical Studies): Classical drama has been performed at the University of Michigan for generations. Stashed in chaotic piles in the Bentley library and filed away in the cabinets of the University productions office in the League, programs and flyers, scrapbooks and letters tell a story of the modern performances of these ancient plays.  How did these productions reflect the political ideology of their day?  Can such modern interpretations help us better understand the plays themselves?  What untapped sources remain from which we might glean more information about the productions of ancient plays at Michigan?

  Chad Schroeder (Classical Studies): In 150 years, the study of classical antiquity at the University of Michigan has grown from a lone professor servicing the Greek and Latin needs of frontier students into the Department of Classical Studies, one of the premiere departments in the country. This lecture will focus on the first century of this development, discuss the trends in the study of antiquity as they emerged and shaped instruction here, and suggest how the department might look to its past for future needs.

  Björn Anderson (Classical Art and Archaeology): This lecture will discuss the history of Classical Archaeology at UM: how it emerged, who the main agents were, and how it developed in the years between World War I and World War II.  The larger development of the discipline during the period, and how Michigan fits into the trends, will be considered.

• Monday, March 27, 2006 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 3222: A pair of Postcolonial Classics Lectures. Rama Mantena (Library of Congress) will speak on "The Uses of Rome in Discourses on Britain’s Indian Empire." Mantena's paper will consider two broad uses of classical scholarship in British India: first, the significance of philological researches for the elaboration of empire in the late eighteenth century, and second, the writings of Charles E. Trevelyan and  T. B. Macaulay who drew on the Roman model of empire as a way to argue for empire or a proper political relationship between India and Britain.  The two uses diverged in their understanding of difference in the colonial context: whereas the former begins with linguistic and racial affinity, it is unable to resolve radical difference in the present; the latter’s premise is that Indians and Britons are very different, and they argue that an imperial framework would gradually eliminate difference and bring subject and ruler closer together towards a common goal.  In effect, the use of imperial Rome as a model for empire was to resolve the political uncertainty that ensued after the conquest of the Indian subcontinent at the end of the eighteenth century. The second lecture, "Derek Walcott's Postcolonial Philology," will be delivered by Cashman Kerr Prince (McMaster University). Prince's paper will examine how Derek Walcott rewrites classical literature in his own poetry, critiquing the British imperial educational system while also embracing a vision of the classical past now enriched to encompass Caribbean and postcolonial realities. Walcott's book-length autobiography, Another Life, some shorter lyric poems, and Omeros will be discussed.

• Tuesday, April 4 & Wednesday, April 5, 2006: James S. Ackerman - "Architectural Orientalism: Reflection on the Interplay of East and West. The Classics and Architectural History Workshop is honored to host Dr. James S. Ackerman for three events April 4th and 5th, 2006. James Sloss Ackerman is a preeminent scholar of architectural history. His work systematically and critically incorporates both written and visual sources. The resulting body of scholarship has had considerable influence on both architectural historians and practical architects. He is inspired by the cultural role and responsibility of the architectural historian, and as a result, he continues to give fruitful ideas to the development and contemplation of architecture in both America and in Europe.

  Dr. Ackerman will be giving a public lecture on April 5th at 7:00 pm at the Rackham Amphitheater. His lecture is entitled, "Architectural Orientalism: Reflection on the Interplay of East and West" and was inspired by his recent travels to India and Turkey. In it Dr. Ackerman plans to contemplate, "the failure of our architectural history and criticism to include other cultures in the understanding of our own." In addition Dr. Ackerman will be hosting two small discussion sections based on his recent book, Origins, Imitation, Conventions: Representation in the Visual Arts. For more information on these discussion sessions, please follow this link.

• Friday, April 7, 2006 from 1 pm to 7 pm in Mason Hall Room 2306: Socratic Personae - A Day of Talks on Socrates and the Socratic Legacy. Conference organizer Prof. Sara Ahbel-Rappe writes: "We are living in the midst of a Socratic revival, both academic and broadly cultural. On the one hand, teaching by the Socratic method, Socratic counseling, and the trademark Socrates Cafes proliferate throughout the elementary schools and law schools, therapy offices, and cafes of North America. On the other hand, a flurry of scholarly works seek to discover the doctrinal commitments of the historical Socrates, the role of Socrates in Hellenistic philosophy, and the ideal of Socrates in such later thinkers as Montaigne, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Who was Socrates that he should have spawned such diverse offspring? Rather than venture a single answer, the talks of Socratic Personae investigate and exemplify the various ways in which versions of this question can be answered. We are interested in studying the contexts in which Socrates himself lived and talked, and also the contexts in which he was studied and reinvented throughout history."

  Schedule of Talks:
  1:00 pm - James Porter: "Nietzsche and the Problem of Socrates"
  1:50 pm - Glenn Most: "Socrates and Hegel"
  2:50 pm - Henry Dyson: "Reading Plato on the Porch: Plato's Socrates and the Early Stoa"
  3:40 pm - Harold Tarrant: "Eros in Socrates and Pseudo-Plato"
  4:40 pm - Raphael Woolf: "Socratic Authority"

• Friday, April 14, 2006 from 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in 3222 Angell Hall: Nineteenth-Century Imperialism and Classicism, a panel of the Nighteenth-Century Forum (NCF) conference entitled "Art and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America: A Transatlantic Exchange."

Nineteenth-Century Imperialism and Classicism features:
Professor Yopie Prins, Moderator
Joanna Patterson, University of Michigan - "Fred Holland Day's Photographic Classicism and the Task of Portraiture"
Adam Mazel, New York University - "'A Savage Race': Hellenism and Imperialism in Tennyson's 'Ulysses'"
Aishwarya Lakshmi, University of Chicago - "Land, Event, Empire: The Aestheticization of the Mutiny of 1857"
Parama Sarkar, Michigan State University - "Mapping the World: The 'Picturesque' in Nineteenth-century British Women's Travelogues to India"

NCF, an interdisciplinary group comprised of faculty and graduate students at the University of Michigan, is hosting a graduate student conference on the convergences between aesthetics and politics in the nineteenth century on Friday, April 14th. The conference will begin with the keynote lecture entitled "Early and Often: the Aesthetics of Victorian Politics" by Professor Elaine Hadley. A light breakfast will be served. Two panels featuring graduate student speakers from a variety of universities as well our own will precede the lunch break, and the last panel will follow in the late afternoon. The day will conclude with a roundtable on politics and pedagogy and an evening reception. Featured panelists will include Professor Sandra Gunning, Professor Lucy Hartley, Visiting Professor Elizabeth Miller, and graduate students, Ji-Hyae Park and Kelly Williams. For more information, please see the NCF website.

• Thursday, July 27 - Saturday, July 29, 2006: 4th Marks Conference: Myth and the New Science" at Burwalls, the University of Bristol. In the eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico formulated his theories of history of human civilization as The New Science, in a gesture which curiously parallels the proclamation of a new epistemology by the father of history, Herodotus, in the fifth century BC. In the history of history, we continuously see this mode of knowledge re-created and displayed anew, as new, and the discourse from which it repeatedly emerges is most often that of myth. This relationship is not simply one of opposition, as the early historians appropriate myth even while they seem to separate their works from this kind of story-telling. A similarly complex relationship can be seen today between myth and history. Contemporary views of the social significance of myth have clear affinities with histories of mentalité, and the importance of history in shaping individual and collective identitiy. In both oral and written history can be seen mythicizing structures, through which events in time can be made meaningful beyond time. In the twentieth century, the importance of memory, and of the performance of memory, has become pressing for the reaffirmation of humanity. PLENARY SPEAKERS: Stephen Bann, University of Bristol and James Bono, SUNY. OTHER SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Sandra Burr, Helen Cullyer, Angela Gosetti-Murrayjohn, David Haycock, Brooke Holmes, Pascale Hummel, Bruce King, Miriam Leonard, Philip Lewin, Genevieve Liveley, Sandra Luft, Lisa Nocks, Liz Potter, Christos Tsagalis, Ika Willis. For more information, please see the conference website.

2004-2005:

• Tuesday, October 12, 2004 from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in the Classics Library (Angell Hall 2175): A TRANSLATION WORKSHOP featuring Kris Fletcher entitled "Ovid's Daphne and the Translation of Myth". Kris Fletcher is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classics and is presently writing a dissertation entitled "Ovid, Mythography, and the Translation of Myth," an exploration of the issues surrounding the translation of myth, focusing on Ovid's Metamorphoses and other works devoted primarily to relating myths. This dissertation stems from a wider interest in the Roman (especially poetic) uses of Greek mythology.
  
  
• Wednesday, January 5, 2005 from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Classics Library (Angell Hall 2175): A one-day colloquium entitled "Beyond Antiquity: The Classical Ideal from Petrarch to Poliziano, Poussin, and Wren" organized by James I. Porter (University of Michigan) examining the idea of "the Classical" in the medieval and Renaissance periods. Guest speakers included James Clark (University of Bristol), who works on monastic orders in Britain and Classical learning; Christopher S. Celenza (History, Michigan State University), who works on Italian humanism; Richard Neer (Art History, University of Chicago), who is a Classical art historian whose specialty includes Poussin; and Lydia Soo (University of Michigan), who is an architect with special research interests in Roman architectural history. Moderators included U-M faculty Basil Dufallo (Classics), Elizabeth Sears (History of Art), and Karla Taylor (English and Medieval & Early Modern Studies). Co-sponsored by the History of Art Department, the program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Department of Classics, the Gerald F. Else Fund, and the School of Architecture. For more information, please visit the conference website.
  
  
• Thursday, January 20, 2005, at 4:00 p.m., in the Henderson Room of the Michigan League: A talk entitled "Tony Blair's Athenian Birthday", delivered by Sir Peter Stothard, who is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. From 1992 to 2002, Stothard was the editor of The Times. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Thirty Days: An Inside Account of Tony Blair at War (2004). The event was co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies, the European Union Center, the Department of Classical Studies, and the Modern Greek Program.
  
  
• Friday & Saturday, January 21-22, 2005: Two events featuring the life and work of Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, writer, theorist, performer, director, composer, costume designer, and choreographer of Greek drama in the early 20th century. Events were co-sponsored by the Program in Modern Greek, the Program in Comparative Literature, and the Gerald F. Else Fund in the Department of Classical Studies:
  • Friday, January 21, 2005, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., in Angell Hall Auditorium C (435 S. State St.): A screening of film footage from the Delphic Festival of 1927, including scenes from the production of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound (directed and choreographed by Eva Palmer-Sikelianos). The film was followed by a lecture entitled"Placing the Delphi Prometheus: Theatre, Cinema, Culture" by Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol). Abstract: "The Delphic Festivals of 1927 and 1930, organised by the American director and choreographer Eva Palmer and the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos, are a landmark in the twentieth-century reception of Greek tragedy. They had a vital role in legitimising the revival of Greek drama in archaeological sites around the Mediterranean, and exerted a seminal influence on the reinvention of Greek theatre as heritage, to be displayed for the benefit and education of modern audiences. The highlight of the first festival was a stage production of Aeschylus' Prometheus. The paper will focus attention on the film version of this production. It will be argued that the film is not simply a recording of the stage performance but an artistic product in its own right. Even though it is not the first film of Greek tragedy, as has sometimes been argued, it has an exciting history which testifies in a striking manner to the legacy of the Delphic Festivals." This event was free and open to the public.
    
  • Saturday, January 22, 2005, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., in Angell Hall 3222: Workshop, "Eva Palmer Sikelianos: Past, Present, Future Directions". Bagels and coffee at 9:30 a.m. From 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., featured panelists offered brief remarks (5-10 minutes), followed by open discussion:

    1. Artemis Leontis (University of Michigan): Eva as expatriate/traveler and her place within Modern Greek Studies.

    2. Eleni Sikelianos (Naropa and University of Denver): A reading from the family memoir about Eva.

    3. Gayle Rubin (University of Michigan): Eva's years in Paris, Natalie Barney's circle.

    4. Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan): Eva and the theory of tragedy.

    5. Pantelis Michelakis (Bristol University): The Delphi Festival and other Greek drama festivals.

    6. Gonda van Steen (University of Arizona): Stage performance at Delphi and modern performances of Greek drama.

    7. Mary Hart (Getty Museum): Eva as costume and mask designer.

    8. Ann Cooper Albright (Oberlin College): Perspectives of a dance historian and choreographer.

    9. Yopie Prins (University of Michigan): The Bacchae directed by Eva at women's colleges.

From 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., a lunch buffet for all participants (panelists and audience), and from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., discussion and practical planning for future research, projects, and collaborations took place. A copy of questions guiding the discussion on Saturday can be found here.

• Monday, January 31, 2005 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.: Workshop on Interpreting the Bacchae for Performance. On Monday evening, members of the cast and crew of the Basement Arts acting troupe, who performed Euripides' Bacchae on February 10-12 in the Frieze Building, met with members of the Classics Department, English Department, and Residential College, to discuss questions and problems of interpretation of the play for performance. Ruth Scodel, Yopie Prins, Kate Mendeloff, and Mike Sampson along with Al Duncan and other members of the Bacchae troupe, considered issues like humor in the play, the presentation of Pentheus, metatheatricality, chorus, the concept of the god and the Dionysus/Pentheus 'ahh' moment. There was no formal presentations but rather discussion of these issues in a workshop format, with the aim of putting the resources of the Classics and English Departments at the service of the acting troupe.
  
  
• Wednesday, April 20, 2005 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the Vandenberg Room of the Michigan League: Awards were presented for the winning entries of the Fourth Annual CFC Translation Contest at the Classics Department Awards Ceremony. Undergraduate and graduate student prize recipients each read their entries at the ceremony. Visit our CFC Translation page for more information!
  
  
• Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 4:00 p.m. at the Kelsey Museum: Annual CFC End-of-the-Year Reception.

2003-2004:

• September 10, 2003 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175.: "WHAT IS CLASSICAL?" A roundtable discussion with U-M graduate students followed by discussion. Participants included Meilee D. Bridges (English), Marcelo Hamam (Comparative Literature), Jonah Johnson (Comparative Literature), Michael Kicey (Comparative Literature), and Despina Margomenou (Anthropology). Moderated by Vassilis Lambropoulos (Classics and Comparative Literature). Co-sponsored by the C.P. Cavafy Professorship in Modern Greek Studies and the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies.
  
  
• September 21, 2003 from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the University Club, Michigan Union: Arthur and Mary Platsis Student Prizes and The Second Annual Platsis Symposium on the Classical Tradition: "BIOETHICS, ANCIENT AND MODERN".

  Speakers included:

  Georgios Anagnostopoulos, Professor of Philosophy, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, and Director of the UCSD Center for the Humanities, University of California, San Diego: "Ancient Greek Views on the Goals of Medicine and their Implications."
  U-M Respondent: Rachana Kamtekar, Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
  
  Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, Ryan Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy, Georgetown University; and Member, President Bush's Council on Bioethics: "Human Embryos: An Aristotelian Analysis."
  U-M Respondent: Roger Albin, Professor of Neurology.
  
  David A. Prentice, Professor, Life Sciences, Indiana State University; Adjunct Professor, Medical & Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine; and Founding Member, Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics: "Science, Society, and Stem Cells."
  U-M Respondent: Elizabeth Petty, Associate Professor of Human Genetics & Internal Medicine.
  
  September 22, 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union: The three keynote speakers participated in a roundtable discussion on "Bioethics in the Age of Stem Cell Research." This session was chaired by Sem Phan U-M Professor of Pathology.
  
  Supported by the Arthur & Mary Platsis Endowment Fund in the Modern Greek Program, Department of Classical Studies, and co-sponsored by CFC and the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies.

• Friday, October 10, 2003 at 5:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A lecture entitled "HOW MANY HOMERS?" by Glenn Most, Professor of Ancient Greek at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and Professor in the Committee on Social Thought in the Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago. Co-sponsored by the Department of Classical Studies.
  
  
• January 23, 2004 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Haven Hall 5670: "AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLASSICISTS IN THE 19TH CENTURY: A SYMPOSIUM". This symposium illuminated the special exhibit housed in the U-M Graduate Library entitled "Twelve Black Classicists," which was touring the country contemporaneously. Wilson Moses was the keynote speaker for this event. Moses holds the Feree Professorship of American History at Pennsylvania State University. He has lectured in England, Malawi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Austria, Hungary, and Germany. He has also held senior Fulbright professorships at the University of Vienna and the Free University of Berlin. He is author, most recently, of Afrotopia: Roots of African-American Popular History (1998) and the forthcoming Creative Conflict in African American Thought. The afternoon's activities also included a panel with Kevin Gaines (CAAS/History), Arlene Keizer (CAAS/English), Simon Gikandi (Comparative Literature), Julia Rosenbloom (Classical Studies), and Michele Ronnick of Wayne State University, who assembled the exhibit. Co-sponsored by the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), the Program in Comparative Literature, the Department of Classical Studies, the Museum Studies Program, and the Department of English.

• January 29, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A lecture entitled "THE AESTHETIC TURN: AESTHETIC CRITICISM AND LATIN POETRY" by Charles Martindale, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol. Co-sponsored by the Department of Classical Studies.

• January 30, 2004 from 8:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Angell Hall 3222: "REVISING ANTIQUITY: RE-IMAGINING THE ANCIENT WORLD IN 19TH-CENTURY BRITAIN", A one-day symposium organized by Meilee D. Bridges (English).
  
  Featured speakers included:
  Caroline Arscott (Senior Lecturer, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
  Shawn Malley (Assistant Professor of English, Bishop's University, Quebec)
  Oswyn Murray (CUF Lecturer in Ancient History, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford)
  Elizabeth Prettejohn (Professor of Modern Art, University of Plymouth, Exeter)
  
  Co-sponsored by the Department of Classical Studies, Rackham Graduate School, the Department of English Language & Literature, the Center for European Studies, the C.P. Cavafy Professorship in Modern Greek, the Department of Art History, the Institute for the Humanities, and the Nineteenth-Century Forum. For more information, please see the conference website.
  
  
• Thursday, March 4, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A lecture entitled "THE BEAUTY OF THE ETHICAL LIFE: LACAN'S ANTIGONE" by Miriam Leonard, Lecturer and Research Fellow in Classics, Department of Classics and Ancient History at the Univeristy of Bristol. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Program in Comparative Literature, the Department of Classical Studies, and the Women's Studies Program.
  
  
• Wednesday, March 17, 2004 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A brown bag lunch and TRANSLATION WORKSHOP entitled "THINKING IN LATIN: A CONVERSATION WITH FRANK BIDART". The panel of respondents featured Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Classics), Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages), and Ray McDaniel (Sweetland Writing Center), and the discussion was moderated by Yopie Prins (English and Comparative Literature). Frank Bidart has published five books of poetry. The first three are collected, with new poems, in In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990). His fifth volume, Desire (FSG), appeared in 1997 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been honored with the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation Writer's Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America. He teaches at Wellesley College. For copies of the poems he discussed at the workshop, please click on the following links below (.pdf files): "The Second Hour of the Night"; "After Catullus"; "As the Eye to the Sun"; "Catullus: Excrucior"; "Confessional"; "Note"; "Odi et Amo"; "The Return"; "Virgil: Aeneid 1.1-33".
  
  
• Friday, March 26, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): A TRANSLATION WORKSHOP entitled "HOW TO DESTROY THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY", featuring David Halperin, who is W.H. Auden Collegiate Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Queer Theory of Michel Foucault (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press); How to Do the History of Homosexuality (2002); Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (1995), One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990), and Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry (1983), and and he is an editor of Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (1990), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (1993), and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Reception following.
  
  
• Saturday, March 27, 2004 from 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Tappan Hall: A symposium on Classicism and the history of art entitled "ROMANTIC CLASSICAL: PIRANESI, CANOVA, INGRES, DELACROIX". Panelists include Professors Bruce Frier, Alex Potts, Susan Siegfried, and Michele Hannoosh; Jim Porter and Richard Janko introduced and moderated the panel. Co-sponsored by the Department of Classical Studies. For more information, please see the panel website.
  
  
• Tuesday, April 13, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. in Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library): THIRD ANNUAL CFC TRANSLATION CONTEST AWARD CEREMONY featuring guest Diane Rayor, who delivered a presentation entitled "TRANSLATING APHRODITE". Diane Rayor is Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She is the author and translator of The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes (U of California P, 2004); the coeditor, with William Batstone, of Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry: An Anthology of New Translations (1995); the author and translator of Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece (U of California P, 1991); and the translator, with Stanley Lombardo, of Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments (1988). She read from her translations of the "Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite" and Sappho's poetry, and she discussed the practice of translation, particularly the issue of translating voice.
  

2002-2003:

• September 12, 2002 from 4:00-5:30 p.m.: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP : "ANCESTRAL VOICES: THE POLITICS OF ROMAN TRANSLATION" with Assistant Professor Jay Reed (Classical Studies). Mason Hall 3415.
  
  
• September 23, 2002 from 8:00-10:00 p.m.: Verse Theater Manhattan performed WAR MUSIC , Christopher Logue's version of Homer's Iliad (as part of the Platsis Symposium on War and Democracy) in the Mendelssohn Theater.
  
  
• October 18, 2002 at 12:00 p.m.: OVERTURES: "LOVE AND DEATH: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY DISCUSSION ABOUT MEDEA IN PERFORMANCE". Roundtable discussion on the Abbey Theatre of Ireland's production of Euripides' Medea, starring Fiona Shaw and directed by Deborah Warner. Yopie Prins (UM Professor of Comparative Literature) moderated a discussion with Shaw and Warner in dialogue with UM professors Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Classics), Linda Gregerson (English), Kate Mendeloff (Drama, Residential College), and Ruth Scodel (Classics). Michigan League, Koessler Room (3rd floor).
  
  
• November 25, 2002 from 4:00-5:30 p.m.: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP : "Teaching Translation" with Netta Berlin (Visiting Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin), Sara Forsdyke (Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin), and Donka Markus (Lecturer II in Classics). Classical Studies Conference Room, Angell Hall 2115A.
  
  
• February 14-23, 2003: ARTIFACTS/ARTIFICES: FABRICATING CULTURAL MEMORY
  Media Union Gallery, University of Michigan (North Campus)
  (Exhibits open from noon to 6:00 p.m. daily)
  
  Exhibit : Eleanor Rappe's Plato's Studio: Fragments and Restorations
  Reception: February 21, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Media Union Gallery
  
  Panel : "The Past as Forgery"
  February 21, 2003 from 3:00-5:30 p.m
  With Kenneth Lapatin, Getty Museum of Los Angeles
  Cynthia Freeland, University of Houston
  Eleanor Rappe, Santa Fe
  Jeffrey Lieber, University of Michigan
  
  Also on display are Multi-Media Exhibits:
  Virtual Exhibit, "CabiNET": Curiosity Cabinets in Virtual Space
  Manuscript Exhibit, "Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions in Eighteenth-Century Letters"
  Audio Exhibit, "Ha-Saruf: Exploring Boundaries of Artistic Truth through a Case of
  Musical Forgery in Israel"
  
  
• March 5, 2003 at 5:00 p.m.: "COMBAT TRAUMA AND THE UNDOING OF CHARACTER". A talk delivered by Dr. Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. Q&A session followed. Dr. Shay is a specialist on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and has a clinical practice with Vietnam veterans at the Boston VA Hospital. He looks at the Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey as points of comparison to our own practices of training and reintegrating soldiers in our American military. Residential College Auditorium (E. University Ave. between Willard and Hill, East Quadrangle). Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Residential College.
  
  
• March 7, 2003 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.:"DEAD LOVERS: EROTIC BONDS AND THE STUDY OF PRE-MODERN EUROPE". A one-day symposium organized by Basil Dufallo (Classics). All panels in Angell Hall 3222. Co-sponsored by Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS).

  9:00 Coffee and Light Breakfast

  9:20 Introductory Remarks
  Basil Dufallo

  9:30 Panel: Classical Antiquity
  Jim Porter, Moderator
  David Halperin, "The Best Lover"
  Basil Dufallo, "The Roman Elegist's Dead Lover: Propertius and the Blindness of Affect"
  15-Minute Break
  Jay Reed, "Wilfred Owen's Adonis"
  Yopie Prins, "Modern Maenads"

  12:15 Lunch Break (not provided)

  1:30 Panel: The Medieval Period
  Catherine Sanok, Moderator
  Alison Cornish, "For the Love of Rome: Eroticism in Petrarch's 'Spirto gentil'"
  Helmut Puff, "Orphic Ways: Orpheus after Eurydice"
  Catherine Brown, "Dead Letters"

  3:30 Break

  4:00 Panel: Early Modern Continuities
  Valerie Traub, Moderator
  Samuel Sanchez, "Until Death Do Us Part?: Strategies of Desire and Possession in 16th-Century Spain"
  Silke Weineck, "Dead Children"
  Michael Schoenfeldt, "'Give Sorrow Words': Speaking Grief in Shakespeare"

• March 14-15, 2003: Despina Margomenou's workshop, entitled "HOW THE MYCENAEANS WON THE WAR BUT LOST THEIR CHARM: THE CURRENT STATUS OF AEGEAN PREHISTORY".
  
  
• April 1, 2003 at 4:00 p.m.: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP : "ON RENDERING THE SHORT POEM: EPIGRAM TRANSLATION--ITS CHALLENGES AND REWARDS" with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Classical Studies). Classics Library, Angell Hall 2175.
  
  
• April 11, 2003 at 4:00 p.m.: ANNUAL CFC TRANSLATION CONTEST AWARDS CEREMONY. Student winners of the annual translation contest received prizes and read from their submissions. U-M Professor Anne Carson (English, Classical Studies, Comparative Literature) also shared from her recent translations of Sappho's poetry. Angell Hall 3222.
  
  
• April 17, 2003 and April 18, 2003 at 7:30 p.m.: PHILOCTETES IN VIETNAM and SURVIVORS: THE TROJAN WOMEN was performed. Residential College Auditorium, located mid-way down the block of East University Ave. between Willard and Hill Streets. For information email Kate Mendeloff at mendelof@umich.edu.
  
  
• April 28, 2003 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.: CFC END-OF-THE-YEAR RECEPTION (SPRING PARTY).  An informal, light buffet (with wine) to celebrate the end of the year (and our first-ever course-announcement poster) and to gather together with no particular obligation except, perhaps, an interest in meeting one another and (if the mood strikes) to dream up plans for the future, collaborative and other. Kelsey Museum.

2001-2002:

• November 9-11, 2001: Peter Sparling Dance Company, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and the UMS Choral Union perform Christoph Gluck's ORFEO ED EURIDICE (1762). Sponsored by the University Musical Society (UMS).
  
  
• November 10, 2001 from 2:00-4:00 p.m.: OVERTURES: "A PANEL DISCUSSION OF ORFEO ED EURIDICE IN MUSIC AND DANCE". Keynote Speaker: Dr. Clifford Cranna, Artistic Administrator, San Francisco Opera. University of Michigan Faculty Panelists: Melissa Gross (Associate Professor of Kinesiology), David Halperin (Professor of English Language and Literature), Yopie Prins (Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature), and Peter Sparling (Professor of Dance). Co-sponsored by the University Musical Society. Hussey Room, Michigan League.
  
  
• December 7, 2001 from 2:30-4:00 p.m.: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: "THE LAST PAGAN PROFESSOR: TRANSLATIONS FROM DAMASCIUS' DOUBTS AND SOLUTIONS CONCERNING FIRST PRINCIPLES" by Associate Professor Sara Rappe (Classical Studies). Comparative Literature Seminar Room, Tisch Hall 2018.
  
  
• January 9, 2002 from 5:00-7:00 p.m.: Panel discussion entitled "Classical Pasts, Classical Presents: Interrogating the Classical Ideal." Panelists included Simon Goldhill (Cambridge), James Porter, Yopie Prins, Ruth Scodel, and moderator David Halperin. Comparative Literature Seminar Room, Tisch Hall 2018. Cordial Hour to follow at Zanzibar Restaurant, 214 S. State St.
  
  
• March 16, 2002 from 9:15 a.m.-4:30 p.m.: Conference entitled "GREEK AT A SLIGHT ANGLE: CAVAFY AND CLASSICAL POETRY". Ahuvia Kahane, Patricia Rosenmeyer, and Kathryn Gutzwiller spoke about "Cavafy and Ancient Aesthetics." David Kutzko and Ruth Scodel addressed "Cavafy and Texts." Stephanie Winter, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, and Mary Depew discussed "Cavafy and Callimachus." Michigan Union, Anderson Rooms.
  
  
• March 17, 2002 at 2:00 p.m.: A concert of modern Greek scores with Classical motifs featuring world-renowned pianist and composer John Eaton, who performed with soprano Sharon Quattrin, flutist Alain Barker and electronics technician Tiffany Sevilla. The performance included "A Greek Vision", based on three poems by Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos. of Modern Greek scores with Classical motifs, and a discussion between John Eaton and Andrew Mead (Music Theory, U-M). Following the performance were readings from the great-granddaughter of Angelos Sikelianos, Eleni Sikelianos, as well as poet Keith Taylor. The afternoon concluded with the Contexts for Classics First Annual Translation Contest winners reading their entries. and a light reception. Kerrytown Concert Hall, 415 N. Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor.
  
  
• Tuesday, April 9 at 4:00 p.m.: Paper entitled "FROM SUBSERVIENCE TO AMBIVALENCE: ATTITUDES TOWARD ANTIQUITY IN 20TH-CENTURY GREECE" by Paschalis Kitromilides, Professor of Political Science, University of Athens. Co-sponsored by the C.P. Cavafy Professorship in Modern Greek Studies. Classical Studies Library, 2175 Angell Hall.

2000-2001

• October 20, 2000: Panel discussion entitled "DAPHNE AND APOLLO REMADE" with poet Alice Fulton and composer Enid Sutherland, moderated by Yopie Prins after musical performance at Rackham Auditorium.
  
  
• December 2000: Renowned South African playwright Athol Fugard (Guest Speaker in the UM Visiting Writer Series) featured in a roundtable discussion about his one-act play, _The Island_, which examines justice, state and individual issues. Roundtable discussants included Vassilis Lambropoulos (Classics and Comparative Literature) and Lemuel Johnson (English and CAAS).

1999-2000

• November 9, 1999 at 4:00 p.m.: Roundtable discussion featuring Classicist and poet Anne Carson (Visiting Fellow at the U-M Institute for the Humanities). Panelists included Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Classics), Yopie Prins (English and Comparative Literature), Sara Rappe (Classics), and Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages). Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities.
  
  
• Monday, February 14, 2000 at 8:00 p.m.: Christopher Stray (Department of Classics, University of Wales [Swansea]) delivered a seminar entitled "THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH: OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE AS SITES OF CLASSICAL TRANSMISSION". Co-sponsored by the Program in Comparative Literature, the Chair of Modern Greek Studies, the Department of Classical Studies, the History Department, the English Department, and the School of Education. Tisch Hall 2018 (Comparative Literature Seminar Room).

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